Prof. Cammie McBride
Department of Psychology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
I am honored to have the opportunity to congratulate the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages at CUHK personally on their amazing accomplishments in both teaching and research in the very short period of ten years. This Department has become one of the most highly visible and admired in the University because of its rapid rise to excellence over its short history. It is among the most widely utilized by CUHK students because of its courses in diverse languages, with its popularity surging year by year. Along with high quality teaching, its research record is truly exceptional for such a relatively small faculty. With an outstanding record of international collaborations in fields as diverse as language disorders and neuroscience, language acquisition in bilingual and multilingual contexts, language learning in the hearing impaired and deaf, and computer assisted language learning, this group has consistently obtained grants and publications that showcase its excellence. Perhaps equally important, its research has generated great excitement in the international and Chinese media and the general public. Findings from this department are both theoretically and practically important.
Among the many outstanding features of this department is its true commitment to interdisciplinary research. I have been privileged to work with at least four of its members on different research ideas at different times, and, as a psychologist, I have learned so much from this team of experts. As an Associate Dean for Research in the Social Sciences at CUHK, I can say with confidence that this interdisciplinary approach represents the best hope for all of us for the future. We will better understand, approach, and solve today’s problems best when we work together from multiple perspectives. This group understands this very well and goes from strength to strength, building on its diversity, both in languages studied and in the very varied methods that are used to study them.
Many congratulations to the Department on the occasion of your 10th birthday! I foresee a very bright future ahead, as you train the next generation of excellent practitioners and scientists in multiple areas of importance in language issues. With globalization and more and more societies interacting, issues of language development, learning, and impairment become increasingly salient for society. The leadership role of the Department in this extremely important domain of life makes all of CUHK very proud and benefits us all! Happy, happy birthday!
Catherine McBride
Professor, Department of Psychology
Associate Dean for Research, Faculty of Social Sciences
Category II member,
Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages since 2011